quinta-feira, 13 de agosto de 2015

What An Incredible Stretch Of Open Water Swimming by WOWSA

Courtesy
of WOWSA, Huntington Beach, California.

Over the last few weeks, the open water swimming world has been exploding with
action and adventure. Daily and non-stop - the number of achievements and
accomplishments have been constant and unprecedented.

Not only did hundreds of the fastest open water swimmers on the planet gather
in Kazan, Russia for the world championships and fight it out for berths in the
2016 Rio Olympics, but there have been a slew of triumphant solo swims and
dozens of relays in challenging conditions and hundreds of fascinating races.

This particular stretch of unprecedented open water activity kicked off with
American Haley Anderson and South African Chad Ho winning
the 5 km FINA World Championships in dramatic fashion. Then American Jordan
Wilimovsky and Frenchwoman Aurélie Muller led a group of 20
world-class swimmers who qualified for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games in the 10 km
marathon swim.

There was also a great national team battle between Germany and the
Netherlands and Brazil that preceded some very close 25 km world championship
races where Ana Marcela Cunha and Simone Ruffini won.
Meanwhile, Sharon van Rouwendaal was Lurz-like and repeatedly
demonstrated her prowess in both the pool and open water.

Then trying to
mimic the English Channel and Catalina Channel, the North Channel between
Northern Ireland and Scotland was crowded with swimmers and successes. These included the Infinity V relay, the Fast and Frozen relay, Rohans
More, Graeme Lowe,Adrian Sarchet, and Vicky Miller. The Farallon
Islands was similarly hopping with Kim Chambers, Simon Dominguez and Team
Nadadores each taking their time in the sharky waters.

There were the usual stalwarts in the open water, like Penny Palfrey, Nejib
Belhedi, Marilyn Korzekwa, Sarah Thomas, John Humenik, Kris
Rutford, Bridgett Hobart, and Matthew Moseley who continued to
ply their trade in oceans, seas, lakes and rivers around the world.